A's staff starts to deliver

Published 4:00 am, Friday, May 12, 1995

MINNEAPOLIS - The A's pitching staff, which has been getting lit up like a Presto Log, settled into a rhythm that looked midseason strong in Thursday's 3-1 win over Seattle.

"I think everybody had questions about our starting staff at first," said Dave Stewart, who'll be on the mound Friday night for the A's against Minnesota. "All of us have had bad games, but we've all bounced back from them.

"The biggest plus for us as a pitching staff is the way we handle things," Stewart said. "Things don't sit with us."

Stewart, who was shelled in his first start, has rebounded nicely in the second game. And the staff as a whole is getting better.

The A's staff has held opponents to a .230 batting average and logged 90 strikeouts. The team ERA now stands at 5.04, but has been over 6.00 most of the season.

"Our ERA deserved to be 6.00," said pitching coach Dave Duncan. "But even with 6.00 we were in the middle of the pack. Everybody else was going through the same thing we were going through."

Duncan said the staff is where he wants it to be, since

"spring training would be ending about now . . . I think they're ready."

The short spring left A's pitchers still working on stamina and pitch selection, and the team paid for it the first week, going 1-4. Things didn't get much better against Texas, which pushed the A's around for three wins in the first homestand.

But Oakland got well against Seattle at the Coliseum, sweeping three games from the Mariners to get back into the race in the American League West. And the pitching staff's performance Thursday, with Mike Harkey throwing seven innings of three-hit ball for the win, was the sweetest of the series.

Harkey, who put down 14 Mariners in a row at one point, received a scoreless inning of relief from Jim Corsi, followed by help from Rick Honeycutt and Dennis Eckersley's save, his fifth of the season and 299th of his career.

"Corsi's got that great sinker and all the relivers can throw strikes," said Harkey. "When you get relievers who can go out there and throw strikes, as a starter you have no fear."

Harkey was impressed by the major-league experience on the staff - a total of 113 years, with 39 between Eckersley and Honeycutt and 53 more from the five starters - Stewart, Ron Darling, Todd Stottlemyre, Steve Ontiveros and himself.

"And there's no competition to win a start, which is one of the worst things on a pitching staff," said Harkey.

"This kind of closeness on a staff - I haven't experienced this since 1990 with the Cubs."

Todd Van Poppel, who was taken out of the rotation and put in the bullpen at the start of the season, said, "We've got Eck, we've got Honey, we've got new guys and guys with years of experience. We've got the ability to do whatever we want to do."

Van Poppel has a 1.54 ERA in 11-7/8 innings of relief, using his new tactic of pitching out of the stretch. The rest of the bullpen has also been solid - both Corsi and Honeycutt have yet to be scored upon, and both Dave Leiper and Carlos Reyes have ERAs of 2.45.

Ontiveros and Stewart lead the starters with two wins apiece, while Harkey, Stottlemyre and newcomer Don Wengert each have one.

"I feel I'm getting looser every time out," said Stottlemyre, whose 20 strikeouts are twice as many as anyone else on the team. "And you look at this staff - everybody's a little different. It's a real good mix."

Stottlemyre said he was especially impressed by Harkey's outing against Seattle.

"When you win the first two of a series, a lot of times the other club comes back swinging. They're real aggressive, real hungry. But Harkey was aggressive, too. He came out hungry."

Manager Tony La Russa wasn't sure how his staff would respond after John Briscoe and Bill Taylor went on the disabled list earlier in the year.

"But Corsi's throwing the ball real well," he said.

"We've got Van Poppel and Reyes, we can use (Mark) Acre, Wengert's coming through real well . . ."